What Cargo Ships Are Passing Hormuz Strait?

(MENAFN- Jordan Times) LONDON - Just a trickle of cargo ships and tankers, most of them Iranian, have made it through the Strait of Hormuz since Iranian forces effectively blocked the crucial trade route in the Middle East war.

Here are facts and figures about vessels that have passed through the 167-kilometre long strait since the war broke out with US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28.

95% shipping drop

From March 1 to 0400 GMT on March 24, commodities carriers made just 149 crossings, according to analytics firm Kpler, a 95 per cent decrease from peacetime.

Of these, 94 crossings were by oil and gas tankers, with 61 percent of them loaded and more than two-thirds travelling east out of the strait, Kpler data showed.

On Monday, two Iran-flagged carriers, the Artman and the Kiazand, and a US-sanctioned oil tanker, the Lenore, all navigated the chokepoint.

The Jasmin tanker was among the smaller number crossing in the other direction, bound for an Iranian port after sailing from Karachi, according to maritime trackers.

A Chinese-owned containership, the Newvoyager, also transited the waterway after making a payment to Iranian authorities, Lloyd’s List reported.

The exact amount and method of payment could not be confirmed, it said.

“Political pragmatism has encouraged a small uptick in state-negotiated transits… over the past few days, but do not mistake this for a step change in the security situation,” Lloyd’s List editor Richard Meade wrote Tuesday.

“Iran remains highly capable of damaging shipping transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”

** ‘Tehran Toll Booth’**

Recent crossings appeared to have mainly used a purported Tehran-approved northern route around Larak Island just off the Iranian coast.

Lloyd’s List updated Monday that it has tracked more than 20 ships using the so-called corridor, with the majority Greek-owned but others Indian-, Pakistan- and Syrian-owned.

“Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is increasingly being diverted into Iranian territorial waters in what has been dubbed the ‘Tehran Toll Booth’,” the shipping journal said late Monday.

It added Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps “is understood to be verifying vessel details and, in some cases, extolling a passage fee”.

Iranian, Greek, Chinese ships

The biggest proportion of ships to have passed through the strait are owned or flagged in Iran, followed by Greek and Chinese carriers, Bridget Diakun, an analyst at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, said last week.

“Although Iran is continuing to control the Strait and exit its own oil, everything else is largely still at a standstill,” Meade previously noted.

51 sanctioned ships

Since the war started, more than 40 per cent of the ships transiting the strait have been under US, EU or UK sanctions, according to an AFP analysis of passage data.

Of the oil and gas tankers, 57 per cent were under sanctions.

Since mid-March “anything heading westbound has been shadow fleet, gas carriers or tankers… they absolutely dominate the traffic going through,” Diakun told the Lloyds briefing.

Oil, LNG to Asia

Commodities analysts at JPMorgan bank have noted that most of the oil passing through the strait was headed for Asia, principally China.

Cichen Shen, Asia Pacific editor at Lloyd’s List, said there were indications online that Chinese authorities were working on “some sort of exit plan” for their big tankers stuck in the region.

Meanwhile, Europe-bound LNG cargoes have been diverted to Asia, according to MarineTraffic.

It noted that around 11 LNG tankers originally bound for Europe have been diverted to Asia since March 3, according to its analysis of market data, amid restricted supply and rising spot prices.

1.3 mn barrels of Iran oil

The JPMorgan analysts said overall 98 percent of the observable oil traffic through the strait was Iranian, averaging 1.3 million barrels a day “in early March”.

A fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the strait in peacetime.

Meanwhile, Iranian media reported on Tuesday that Israeli-US strikes targeted two gas facilities and a pipeline, hours after US President Donald Trump stepped back from his threat to attack power infrastructure.

“As part of the ongoing attacks carried out by the Zionist and American enemy, the gas administration building and the gas pressure regulation station on Kaveh Street in Isfahan were targeted,” said the Fars news agency.

The facilities in central Iran were “partially damaged”, added Fars, which was Iran’s only news outlet to report the incident.

It said an attack also targeted the gas pipeline of the Khorramshahr power plant, in the country’s southwest.

“A projectile hit the area outside the Khorramshahr gas pipeline processing station,” Fars reported, quoting the governor of the city bordering Iraq.

It did not specify the extent of the damage.

Trump told AFP on Monday that “things are going very well” with Iran, shortly after announcing talks with Tehran and a five-day pause on targeting the Islamic republic’s power plants.

Trump’s abrupt shift on Iran came hours before the expiration of a two-day ultimatum under which he threatened to attack Iranian power plants if Tehran did not reopen the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian media however said on Monday that there were no negotiations underway towards ending the war.

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